Detailing his progress from an isolated childhood through adolescence to manhood, including an abortive love affair with a classmate's sister, it reports the inner life of a boy's preoccupation with death. The novel's enduring themes of fantasy, despair and alienation have established "Confessions of a Mask" as one of the most important works of fiction to have emerged from Japan in the twentieth century.

Author Biography

Yukio Mishima was born in Tokyo in 1925 and was educated at the Peer's School, where he received a special commendation from the Emperor of Japan. His international reputation as a leading Japanese writer was firmly established by the English publication in 1960 of Confessions of a Mask, considered to be one of Japan's most important post-war novels. In 1970 Mishima publicly committed seppuku, ritual suicide by disembowelment, in an ultimate gesture towards fulfilling his own fantasy of death.